Looking for experiences/advice on high-end scanning options!

[Lucky Luke]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some advice. For a photography workshop at an university we're looking to upgrade some of our scanners. I'm struggling with finding the best solution and I hope you'll share your experiences with certrain methods of scanning.

The situation now:
We have the following scanners dedicated to film scanning in our scanning room: 5x Epson V750, 2x Epson V850, 1x Flextight X1. So we have a very high quality scanner but also some mediocre scanners. I personally dislike the Epson flatbeds since the results always disappoint after I scanning my negatives with a Sony A7II for a while. Also, the holders are easy to break and we have issues with the glas getting scratched. The Flextight can produce great results, but is very expensive and has a bit more of a learning curve.

The workshop is open for all students, not only photography. There is a restriction however that only students from the photography department are allowed to use the Flextight.

What I'd like to do:
I'd like to set up two new workstations. Remove two of the V750's and replace them with higher end solutions. Possibily with the same restriction as the Flextight. Here's a list of important factors:
- Must be able to scan/digitse 35mm & 120. 4x5" optional.
- Must be reasonably sturdy
- Must produce very high quality results
- Must be readily available and have manufacturers support (so for example no scanners that I'd need to find on eBay)
- Let's say the budget is between 3000-4000USD (per workstation), but this is not fixed and could increase if it is absolutely worth it. Buying more Flextights is out of the questions though.

After looking around I feel like there are simply two options. Either go for a dedicated film scanner, or go for the digitising with a camera method.

• Dedicated film scanner

After looking around I find it hard to find a still up to date, readily available and high quality dedicated film scanner. I've seen that there's a new Plustek Opticfilm 120 Pro, but I also read a lot of issues about that scanner. Ofcourse there is the Nikon Coolscan 9000ED but as far as I know that hasn't been in production for a long time and can also be very expensive. Can you help me find good alternatives in this area?

• Digitising with camera

I'm a little biased towards this method since I used to do this at home with my 35mm negatives and got way better results than I've ever had on any Epson V750/V850. Nowadays there seems to be a lot of new products in the market which seems interesting for me. I don't see that in the dedicated scanner field. With digitising a following set-up could work:

- Full frame camera with macrolens
- Negative supply stand/light/holder etc. (full set)
- Lightroom + Negative Lab Pro

I really like the look of the Negative Supply products, but they are also quite expensive... And it is a bit more hands on for students to work with a set-up like this vs. loading your film in a holder and starting up a scanner.

Also, we have some Hasselblad H3D's in our studio's that are simply not seeing use. Students tend to go for the newer DSLR's or grab the Fuji GFX50. I've been thinking about using the H3D to digitise medium format, but this feels very overkill and there are some issues. For example, the H3D can't be tethered with live view so it might be hard to focus and it has quite some shutter slap, so longer exposures are out of the question (unless you want to put the mirror up for each shot).

Anyway... I would love to hear your opinions and options for very high quality of scanning! Any response is really appreciated. Thanks!

 

[foveon_m]

cameras do use Bayer patterns, scanners don´t

 

[sterioma]

This video I just watched last night may be of interest:

 

[Lucky Luke]

This video I just watched last night may be of interest:

Looks promising, thank you!

 

[Les Sarile]

If you have an opportunity to acquire a Coolscan, I would suggest you give it a serious consideration.

I first bought the Coolscan 5000 when it was initially released in early 2000 followed but the 9000 and most recently the V. I use Nikonscan on Windows Vista PCs but you can use current computers running Viewscan too.

For 35mm the 5000 can provide a full res scan in about 35seconds and about 55 seconds with ICE. The V scan times are double that. Both are faster then any others in scan times - specially when ICE is enabled, and because you can just feed strips of 6 frames they are also faster in handling requiring no film holders. Of course the 5000 has the optional whole film strip and 50 slide accessories that make scanning faster and even more convenient.

You've already noticed the results from your Epson flatbeds so here are some res comparisons to the Coolscan using Fuji RVP.

Coolscan full res -> http://www.fototime.com/02BB797801DCA89/orig.jpg

Epson V500 full res -> http://www.fototime.com/33269E445D10043/orig.jpg

Epson V700 full res -> http://www.fototime.com/11F59FA46FF9497/orig.jpg

Since you DSLR scan with a 24MP Sony A7 II, here's a comparison of the Coolscan 4000dpi scans of 35mm film on my K20D (15MP) and to a Nikon D800(36MP).

For the film I used Kodak Techpan shot at ISO25 and developed in Kodak Technidol. As above, I used an 12233 resolution chart arranged 4 high. I used my Pentax LX+Pentax M 50mm f4 macro under optimum settings - tripod, MLU, sufficient lighting and shutter speed and varied apertures. I then scanned/copied the various frames and this is the "best" from the lot although there were actually a few that were equally as good.

Full res -> http://www.fototime.com/8372250EA44CB06/orig.jpg

The full shot is shown in the bottom left.
The 100% crop of the center area of the K20D copy is above it.
The 100% crop of the center area of the Coolscan 4000dpi scan is above that.
The 100% crop of the center area of the D800 copy is top left.
You'll notice the Coolscan resolves a little bit more than the D800 even though the D800 applies more pixels.
For the big 100% crop to the right, I used my K20D+autobellows+Pentax M 50mm f4 macro to magnify the center area about 4.5X. You'll notice the detail that was not resolved by any of the methods above.

Now Coolscan + Nikonscan ICE is really the best and not available from any DSLR scanning method. Here are a couple of perfectly bad examples that show off it's results. As proficient as I am with post work - or spotting a print, I doubt that even with all the time in the world that I could even match the finesse of the ICE results.

The results from the 9000 are even better then the results from the 5000 using Kodak 160VC . . .

Full res -> http://www.fototime.com/36BED059AD8E686/orig.jpg

Kodachrome is not a problem compared to Epson ICE . . .

Full res -> http://www.fototime.com/056E802FBAE131D/orig.jpg

It's one thing that the Coolscan provides great detail and sharpness but I find that it provides accurate color and contrast an even better attribute. In tens of thousands of scans with the Coolscans, I have never had any problems with straight up neutral scans of color negatives using the Coolscan+Nikonscan. Occassionally I would scan some using the Noritsu lab or my Epson yet I will find really off results with those on seemingly perfectly exposed frames that make you wonder if it's the same frame at all.

This one from the same frame of Kodak Gold 100 . . .

This one from the same frame of Kodak Ektar 100

BTW, for DSLR scanning, I believe the Nikon D850 has color negative inversion as a built-in feature. I have not tested that yet but it sounds interesting specially if Nikon has implemented the same algorithm in it as they did for Nikonscan.

 

[fs999]

Plustek with OpticFilm 120 Pro has a good support in Germany. It has SilverFast Ai Studio as software with auto calibration.

 

[Lucky Luke]

If you have an opportunity to acquire a Coolscan, I would suggest you give it a serious consideration.

I first bought the Coolscan 5000 when it was initially released in early 2000 followed but the 9000 and most recently the V. I use Nikonscan on Windows Vista PCs but you can use current computers running Viewscan too.

For 35mm the 5000 can provide a full res scan in about 35seconds and about 55 seconds with ICE. The V scan times are double that. Both are faster then any others in scan times - specially when ICE is enabled, and because you can just feed strips of 6 frames they are also faster in handling requiring no film holders. Of course the 5000 has the optional whole film strip and 50 slide accessories that make scanning faster and even more convenient.

You've already noticed the results from your Epson flatbeds so here are some res comparisons to the Coolscan using Fuji RVP.

Coolscan full res -> http://www.fototime.com/02BB797801DCA89/orig.jpg

Epson V500 full res -> http://www.fototime.com/33269E445D10043/orig.jpg

Epson V700 full res -> http://www.fototime.com/11F59FA46FF9497/orig.jpg

Since you DSLR scan with a 24MP Sony A7 II, here's a comparison of the Coolscan 4000dpi scans of 35mm film on my K20D (15MP) and to a Nikon D800(36MP).

For the film I used Kodak Techpan shot at ISO25 and developed in Kodak Technidol. As above, I used an 12233 resolution chart arranged 4 high. I used my Pentax LX+Pentax M 50mm f4 macro under optimum settings - tripod, MLU, sufficient lighting and shutter speed and varied apertures. I then scanned/copied the various frames and this is the "best" from the lot although there were actually a few that were equally as good.

Full res -> http://www.fototime.com/8372250EA44CB06/orig.jpg

The full shot is shown in the bottom left.
The 100% crop of the center area of the K20D copy is above it.
The 100% crop of the center area of the Coolscan 4000dpi scan is above that.
The 100% crop of the center area of the D800 copy is top left.
You'll notice the Coolscan resolves a little bit more than the D800 even though the D800 applies more pixels.
For the big 100% crop to the right, I used my K20D+autobellows+Pentax M 50mm f4 macro to magnify the center area about 4.5X. You'll notice the detail that was not resolved by any of the methods above.

Now Coolscan + Nikonscan ICE is really the best and not available from any DSLR scanning method. Here are a couple of perfectly bad examples that show off it's results. As proficient as I am with post work - or spotting a print, I doubt that even with all the time in the world that I could even match the finesse of the ICE results.

The results from the 9000 are even better then the results from the 5000 using Kodak 160VC . . .

Full res -> http://www.fototime.com/36BED059AD8E686/orig.jpg

Kodachrome is not a problem compared to Epson ICE . . .

Full res -> http://www.fototime.com/056E802FBAE131D/orig.jpg

It's one thing that the Coolscan provides great detail and sharpness but I find that it provides accurate color and contrast an even better attribute. In tens of thousands of scans with the Coolscans, I have never had any problems with straight up neutral scans of color negatives using the Coolscan+Nikonscan. Occassionally I would scan some using the Noritsu lab or my Epson yet I will find really off results with those on seemingly perfectly exposed frames that make you wonder if it's the same frame at all.

This one from the same frame of Kodak Gold 100 . . .

This one from the same frame of Kodak Ektar 100

BTW, for DSLR scanning, I believe the Nikon D850 has color negative inversion as a built-in feature. I have not tested that yet but it sounds interesting specially if Nikon has implemented the same algorithm in it as they did for Nikonscan.

Les, thank you for your extensive reply and all the examples given. I agree with you that the Nikon is a very solid scanner. I've used it myself before and aside from the lack of speed (which is not much of an issue for me) the biggest problem for us is that they're not really readily available and that if I'd be able to get one or two there wouldn't be much support for it - if it all. I will keep your suggestions in mind though, maybe we'll get lucky and run in to a few, who knows. Again, thank you for all the information!

 

[Lucky Luke]

Absolutely the best approach, regardless of budget. AFAIK there's no new scanner on the market that can touch this. I have the Plustek 120 Pro and it's a piece of garbage. It has issues with banding, shadow noise, focus adjustment and its tray mechanism is somewhat fragile so I can't imagine it surviving high-volume usage. Also, forcing students to use Silverfast is inhumane, in my opinion.

For a $4K you will have a world-class camera-scanning setup:

• Make sure the camera is always mounted on a copy stand and always tethered. Too many people complain about pain of setting it up and transferring images. That's because they're not doing it properly. If your camera is a dedicated film digitizing device, the setup is the same as with a scanner.
• Absolutely get negative supply holders and the light source. This fixes a lot of issues mediocre film holders introduce (uneven sharpness, uneven illumination, dark edges, etc). Also, NS folders speed up the process dramatically.
• Negative Lab Pro + Lightroom, when compared to typical scanner software (Silverfast) is miles ahead in terms of user experience and throughput, with comparable quality. Yes, this is an expensive set. But you can save on a camera by buying used. So many people are switching to mirrorless that slightly used top-dog DSLRs from Canon and Nikon are much cheaper now.

My setup is Negative Supply set + Canon 5D Mk4 (dedicated, always attached to a computer), copy stand. This is like "living in the future" as compared to any film scanner I ever had, including Plustek 120 Pro and Coolscan 5000.

For 135 format this setup is a speed demon. One 36exp roll goes in less than 2 minutes, and the output is insane, as the sensor has excess of resolution and dynamic range to deal with all common emulsions. My "scans" for medium format (6x6) end up at 6,200x6,200 pixels after some cropping, but I down-sample most them to 5000x5000px to keep file sizes reasonable, here's a few 5000x5000px scans:

• one
• two
• three
• four (B&W)

Random thoughts:

1. I experimented with color-correction filters (CC50C, some magenta) to lessen the effect of the orange mask, and bring the curves together during capture. In theory, it gives you more dynamic range, but in practice the sensor has so much of it that it doesn't matter, as I never, not once, noticed the difference.
2. Too many people online recommend manual focus. I wasted time following it. Canon's AF on 100mm macro is phenomenal and speeds up the process dramatically.
3. The only "weak link" for medium format here is stitching. I mostly use the stitching function in Lightroom because it's so quick and convenient, but it does leave some artifacts. They are hard to notice (try find them in the samples above), but they are there. If you want absolutely immaculate stitching, you can use Microsoft Composite Image Editor. It's vastly superior but slows you down somewhat because it will not stitch RAW files, so you have to feed it 16-bit TIFFs, introducing one extra step.
4. People ask me about dust all the time. "But scanners remove dust!". In my experience, scanners introduce dust, and then remove it. Scanning with a DLSR is inherently cleaner, I swipe each roll with an anti-static cloth before scanning and dust is not a problem. Besides, the latest version of Negative Supply holders have a built-in anti-static brush, something I don't have (and don't miss)

Hi Gregg,

Thank you for this reply. Sounds very positive. As I've said in the OP I'm a bit biased towards this method since I've had the same experiences with you when I used a mirrorless FF camera at home with this method. The examples you gave also look very promising! By the sound of it you possess the Negative Supply holders/light source. A question about the light source, what kind of output does it have, by which I mean with what kind of shutter speed / f-stop do you use these items? I ask because I'm thinking about using one of our Hasselblad H3D's with macro to scan medium format, which would remove the issue of stitching. It does have some shutter slap though so I couldn't use to slow shutter speeds. Also, it would depend highly on if the autofocus would work properly, since the H3D doesn't support live-view. Or hey, maybe a waist level view finder could work.

I really like the look of the NS range. They're costly, but they also seem like they'd last. I also love the sight of the 35MD holder, although this might be prone to breaking sooner rather than the non-automatic 35mm holder. Is it correct that the holders are made predominantly of metal?

 

[Les Sarile]

For 135 format this setup is a speed demon. One 36exp roll goes in less than 2 minutes, and the output is insane, as the sensor has excess of resolution and dynamic range to deal with all common emulsions. My "scans" for medium format (6x6) end up at 6,200x6,200 pixels after some cropping, but I down-sample most them to 5000x5000px to keep file sizes reasonable, here's a few 5000x5000px scans:

• one
• two
• three
• four (B&W)

So these are DSLR scans of medium format then?

 

[Les Sarile]

Les, thank you for your extensive reply and all the examples given. I agree with you that the Nikon is a very solid scanner. I've used it myself before and aside from the lack of speed (which is not much of an issue for me) the biggest problem for us is that they're not really readily available and that if I'd be able to get one or two there wouldn't be much support for it - if it all. I will keep your suggestions in mind though, maybe we'll get lucky and run in to a few, who knows. Again, thank you for all the information!

Speed greatly depends on the format you will be scanning of course. If true b&w then the Coolscan has minimal advantage as ICE cannot be utilized. For color slides, the advantage of ICE is an advantage. At about 55seconds from a Coolscan 5000 - about a minute and a half for V, time saved in post can be substantial as in this 60's Kodachrome someone had me scan was so dusty dirty would taken far longer to clean in post. And yes the owner did use antistatic as well as film cleaner too. He was blown away by the clean results.

BTW, how are your workflows when scanning color negatives? I have all the autobellows and film holders so DSLR scanning for me takes seconds to get a frame but post processing a color negative is a real bear. Easily exceeding the 55 seconds it takes for my 5000 to provide clean perfectly color balanced results - 35 seconds without ICE. In this Kodak 160VC, knowing what the right color/contrast results are supposed to be, I gave up after trying to match the results from the Coolscan. I've reviewed many workflows posted on YT and every one of them far exceeded the 35 seconds it takes the Coolscan. And this had to applied to each frame.

As I stated earlier, I haven't tried the Nikon D850's built-in color negative conversion. If it's anything like the Nikonscan that could be a huge advantage.

 

[Les Sarile]

You're doing it backwards. You should adjust your Coolscan workflow to match the output of Negative Lab Pro. I am actually in the process of going back in time and re-scanning my scanner-produced images with a camera.

How many scans are those?

 

[jgboothe]

I'm in a similar position to the OP, developing photography facilities for students. We also have a set of V800/V850s and a flextight X1. The flextight is now unsupported and will eventually break down or become unsustainable, so looking to the future, I am thinking along similar lines to yourself.
In general, it's clear that camera capture is likely to be the only way forward in the long term, but building a system which is workable in a University/student setting is not easy. Getting something which can reliably produce scans of the same quality as the Flextight is not trivial. Having done quite a bit of testing myself, I remain unconvinced that any of the current off-the-shelf solutions within a reasonable budget would provide the quality and consistency we would like when operated by students.
For 35mm, the 5DS R (50mp) which I have tested does produce more or less the same quality as the Flextight (max res 6300ppi) within the focal plane, but keeping the entire frame on the focal plane is difficult to say the least. If you want to achieve the highest resolution, you need to be shooting at f5.6 or even f4 to avoid diffraction. The only way I've managed to get the entire frame sharp at these apertures is by sandwiching the film between two sheets of ANR glass, which unfortunately produced newton's rings. Although the Negative Supply holders look pretty good, I seriously doubt that they will be capable of keeping the film this flat - especially with frames at the end of a strip. For me at least, any solution needs to be able to deal with cut strips because that's how film tends to be handled.
Without an extremely high precision system, I'd say it's more realistic to aim for more like 3200ppi on average across the frame, which is still substantially better than an Epson, but even this would be quite hard to maintain with student operators. It doesn't take much for the resolution to drop to below what you would get with the Epson. It would probably be best to recommend shooting at f11, which would limit the maximum resolution in favour of consistency.
In medium format, assuming a single-shot workflow, you would be hard-pushed to get any better than the flatbed with anything larger than 645. Using a 5DS R to shoot 6x6, 6x7 or 6x9, the theoretical maximum resolution is around 2600ppi - realistically you would be getting less than this, and the Epson gives you around 2400ppi. Multi-shot stitching is a possibility but I would not have confidence that many students would a) want to go to this trouble, or b) be capable of doing it properly. 645 could work well, however - with a theoretical max res of around 3500ppi. Because of the lower magnification and subsequent greater depth of field, it might be realistic to get a consistent 3000ppi, which roughly equals the Flextight (3150ppi).
So my thinking at the moment is that it would be feasible to set something up which could consistently get better results than the Epsons for 35mm, but at present I can't see a solution which could reliably get close to the Flextight. For 645, a high-res camera-based system could potentially equal the Flextight (though this is only moderately better than the Epson anyway). For MF 6x6 and above, I don't really see a solution. For large format, the Epsons are probably already the best option.
To be honest, given the above, I think it might be worth considering the Plustek 8200i for 35mm, since it's a self-contained unit, requires very little setup or maintenance and does the negative conversion for you. The optical resolution is around 4000ppi and it's a lot cheaper than a camera setup with good components. It would be a lot slower than a well set-up camera system however, so it depends on whether you want to prioritise batch-scanning or getting the best out of a few frames.
On the subject of control, personally I would not want to attempt a camera setup without live view, which is invaluable for levelling and checking focus. So I'm not sure that using the H3D is a good idea - also its firewire interface will even make tethering a problem going forward.
Anyway, there are some thoughts from someone in a similar position to yourself - sorry I can't really offer any solutions. I'm sure there is a way to make the camera scanning thing work, but I think people generally underestimate how hard it is to get something that works consistently well with operators that don't know what they're doing (students). If you do go down this route, I'll be really interested to hear how it goes.

 

[Helge]

I honestly think that too many scanning threads get ruined by focusing on irrelevant variables, particularly resolution. User experience, consistency, throughput, tonality and colors are much more important, in my humble experience. If you want your students to enjoy photography, eliminate agony & torture first, THEN think about fringe variables like resolution. Scanners = Agony+Torture. Silverfast = Agony+Torture. Give them the most pleasant method of shooting film and posting results on Instagram. That's what they want.

I have already provided some medium format samples above, the kind that you can get by scanning a 12-shot roll in 3 minutes, and be done in less than 15. Here's a 35-mm scan and another one, these your students can get at a rate of 5-7 rolls per hour, using modern software tools, with minimal color corrections, as compared to something like Silverfast. Look at the kids in the corner of the 2nd shot. Do you honestly believe there's anything else you can squeeze out of a 35mm negative that your students can't live without? I can keep producing (and sharing) results like this or this by a hundred per hour, knowing that scanner operators get that kind of output only after monumental amount of suffering, because I used to be one.

And don't get me started on ICE. Dust is yet another reason why scanners are painful. I stopped using scanners, I stopped seeing dust, because apparently films don't attract much of it by themselves. Scanners do.

If they should ever come afoul of comparing their film results of low resolution, to a digital camera of resonably good quality they'd probably come dangerously close to thinking (depending on how good a teacher you've been) "why do I even bother‽".
We need these guys to continue shooting film after they earned their points. Otherwise it was all for naught.

Resolution is important. A single grab with a 24MP camera can be fine as a contact print/drug store print sort of type "what's one the roll" scenario, and to show your film-authenticity off on Instagram.
But for actual printing it's not sufficient.
Even an 8x10 print will show of the deficiencies and artefacts.

One very simple approach is to have a suitable enlarger.
Insert the film.
Screw out the lens of the enlarger.
Put the digital camera with macro lens on its flat back screen on a piece of thin felt or fabric, to make it easy to slide around.
Place it on the base board of the enlarger.
Then just, slide, shoot and stitch. If necessary you can shimmy the camera up with pieces of paper using a spirit level (the iPhones (out of cover naturally) is not bad) to get everything as level and parallel as possible. You are never going to get within more than a tenth of a millimeter in precision with any camera scan setup or common scanner, so stopping down as much as possible is essential.

 

[Helge]

Nonsense. I posted full size scans. Go ahead and print. I did, at 5000px wide they look breathtaking printed at 250dpi. This is as close to theoretical maximum as you can possibly get, and I am showing it with real scans vs theoretical bullshitting. If anything, those scans should be downsampled as they are unnecessarily large. There's nothing else left in those negs post-scanning, as the camera pulled all of available resolution and all of available tonality and color. You may as well get a microscope: you'll be amplifying grain beyond that point. Yes, I am that confident.

And if your students are looking for maximum possible resolution and dynamic range, of course they should turn to digital for it. Brainwashing them with "film superiority" is the opposite of education. We shoot film for a different reason.

https://photo.imx.nl/leica/camera/Leica-camera/styled-34/
In the above the scan shows resolution from an optical print, that is at the very least four times the resolution of the digital Leicas 18MP, so at least 72 MP (if not a lot more). That is from film roughly comparable to TMAX 100.

http://photo-utopia.blogspot.com/2007/10/chumps-and-clumps.html
Grain is not equal to resolution.

Often what you see when you think you see grain is grain aliasing:
http://www.photoscientia.co.uk/Grain.htm

Even simple equipment will allow you to get excellent results when camera scanning. Sensor shift is the next best thing to the macro and stitch approach.
https://transienteye.com/2018/07/30/optimising-film-scans-from-olympus-micro-4-3-cameras/

 

[PhilBurton]

You're doing it backwards. You should adjust your Coolscan workflow to match the output of Negative Lab Pro. I am actually in the process of going back in time and re-scanning my scanner-produced images with a camera.

So what is your Lightroom workflow for images processed with NLP, starting with import. TIFFs?

 

[albireo]

Truly beautiful photography. Love your colours and composition. However, from a technical standpoint your medium format results are, sorry to say, easily obtained even with a humble high-end flatbed scan costing 1/20th of your setup, if used correctly.

For 35mm, where a flatbed sucks, even a 15 year old Minolta Scan Dual IV (can be found used for $200) autofocus scan completely blows away any DSLR scan I've seen until now.

Honestly - I keep reading about how great DSLR scanning is, but all is see is mediocre results. I do not mean to offend anyone, and some of these amateur DSLR concoctions do produce good scans. But they're not worth the exorbitant price they command, and the variability is too high, not to mention the time spent to put together the whole set up and keep it well calibrated.

Looking forward to the day I will be proven wrong and a 200$ DSLR scanning setup will better a real film scanner.

For any student or young photography adopter out there getting into film and scanning: honestly, you do not need a 4K$ DSLR setup to enjoy film photography. You do not need a DSLR for great scans! Go ahead, get a used scanner and learn how to use it. Scanning is I think an enjoyable activity once you're past the steep learning curve. You will save thousands $$$ and enjoy your results immensely.

Absolutely the best approach, regardless of budget. AFAIK there's no new scanner on the market that can touch this. I have the Plustek 120 Pro and it's a piece of garbage. It has issues with banding, shadow noise, focus adjustment and its tray mechanism is somewhat fragile so I can't imagine it surviving high-volume usage. Also, forcing students to use Silverfast is inhumane, in my opinion.

For a $4K you will have a world-class camera-scanning setup:

• Make sure the camera is always mounted on a copy stand and always tethered. Too many people complain about pain of setting it up and transferring images. That's because they're not doing it properly. If your camera is a dedicated film digitizing device, the setup is the same as with a scanner.
• Absolutely get negative supply holders and the light source. This fixes a lot of issues mediocre film holders introduce (uneven sharpness, uneven illumination, dark edges, etc). Also, NS folders speed up the process dramatically.
• Negative Lab Pro + Lightroom, when compared to typical scanner software (Silverfast) is miles ahead in terms of user experience and throughput, with comparable quality. Yes, this is an expensive set. But you can save on a camera by buying used. So many people are switching to mirrorless that slightly used top-dog DSLRs from Canon and Nikon are much cheaper now.

My setup is Negative Supply set + Canon 5D Mk4 (dedicated, always attached to a computer), copy stand. This is like "living in the future" as compared to any film scanner I ever had, including Plustek 120 Pro and Coolscan 5000.

For 135 format this setup is a speed demon. One 36exp roll goes in less than 2 minutes, and the output is insane, as the sensor has excess of resolution and dynamic range to deal with all common emulsions. My "scans" for medium format (6x6) end up at 6,200x6,200 pixels after some cropping, but I down-sample most them to 5000x5000px to keep file sizes reasonable, here's a few 5000x5000px scans:

• one
• two
• three
• four (B&W)

 

[StepheKoontz]

And if your students are looking for maximum possible resolution and dynamic range, of course they should turn to digital for it. Brainwashing them with "film superiority" is the opposite of education. We shoot film for a different reason.

This. I shoot B&W film and scan on an epson flatbed to share and people easily see the difference from digital capture. It's not the resolution. If I want to show off any of the resolution, time to get in the darkroom. But seriously, resolution and clean, noise free images are not why we shoot film.

 

[fs999]

If used correctly OpticFilm 120 Pro and SilverFast AI Studio is a fantastic combo.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

For the film I used Kodak Techpan shot at ISO25 and developed in Kodak Technidol. As above, I used an 12233 resolution chart arranged 4 high. I used my Pentax LX+Pentax M 50mm f4 macro under optimum settings - tripod, MLU, sufficient lighting and shutter speed and varied apertures. I then scanned/copied the various frames and this is the "best" from the lot although there were actually a few that were equally as good.

Full res -> http://www.fototime.com/8372250EA44CB06/orig.jpg

It would be interesting to see what the results would be if the contrast applied between the coolscan and the camera scans was the same. Once thing I've found through my own journey is that the contrast applied to the image when turning into a positive has a huge impact on perceived resolution. It doesn't really change the actual resolution captured, but, it does affect what we perceive. For example, jacking the contrast up moves more of the finer detail up above the 50% MTF mark where we are most sensitive to actually seeing it. I point this out because the frame from the coolscan very clearly has more contrast applied: The whites are a lot whiter, and it looks like there are areas of the image that are actually clipping to white with no grain detail whereas the camera scans actually aren't as white and show more tone detail in those areas. This does effect how much resolution we think we see with our eyes. Secondly, how you process the scans from a bayer array has a huge impact on how much usable resolution you have to work with, especially with black and white film. If you have the capability to do so, it's best to first white balance the raw sense values for your light source used to illuminate the film, then once that is done, since you're effectively digitizing tonal information that has no color (it's BW film), you can treat the bayer samples directly as if they are monochrome and not run them through any de-bayering or demosaicing process. Doing so unlocks a shocking amount of extra resolution that was effectively being thrown away by the processing software that was treating each RGGB quad as a collection of color pixels. Absolutely massive boost in visible resolution, especially if your lens can render it onto the sensor.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Ah! The same old bullshit with exotics like "The Spur Orthopan film, developed in Nano Edge" comes out. You could have used a better known edge case like CMS20. All right, let me just stitch two shots then, by adding 30 seconds to my workflow. But most importantly is that nobody here shoots "spur orthopan", on a tripod, with $5K lens at optimal resolution, developed in some kind of nano edge. Gold 200, HP5+, Delta/T-Max 100, HP5+ and Delta 400, all CN 400 films, developed in Xtol, D76, or Flexicolor - everything the real world people shoot, comfortably falls within capture capabilities of any 24MP sensor manufactured within last 5 years. Which is very different from your stated BS of "Even an 8x10 print will show of the deficiencies and artefacts." I posted full-size scans. Print them at 8x10" or even bigger, like I did. They're more than enough to prove my point. This is something that is enjoyable and available to anyone in their own home, approximately nobody in the world is interested in "spur orthopan developed in nano edge and printed in a darkroom".

I'll second this. The number one film that comes through my lab for processing is..... *drum roll*..... Kodak Colorplus 200, followed by Gold 200, and Ultramax 400. Most of the images are shot on crap point and shoot cameras they picked up at a garage sale, or on a camera they had in storage for the last 20 years and pulled out, or was given to them by their parents. A huge number of the images aren't exposed correctly, have a way too slow shutter speed to stop motion, and/or aren't in focus because the camera either doesn't autofocus, or they haven't figured out how to focus the camera yet, and in general are what you would expect to see if a complete amateur was shooting it, which is actually what is happening. There's nothing wrong with that, and if they're having fun, all that much better. Even though I offer high resolution floating point Lightroom DNG files for my scans, once again, the number one scan format requested is.... *drum roll*... JPEG. Yep. Almost everybody wants jpeg, even though they can have what is effectively a high resolution raw scan for no additional cost. Most of them don't even want the big jpegs, they want jpegs they can fit in the storage on their phone and easily share with their friends via text message or some chat/social media app. Many of these customers don't even care if the color from the scan is a little off. You should see what it looks like after they jam it through their collection of filters or presets from whatever app they're using. Yeah.... that's the state of film. The younger crowd loves it and strangely, wants it because it's not digital, but once it's processed, only wants to interact with it digitally, and is totally OK with iPhone resolution scans, and as long as the color from the scan is reasonably in the ballpark, has zero issues with it.

I'm sure the old guys on here would totally choke if they saw what comes through my lab. The younger generation by and large doesn't give a flying nit about the stuff many of the older folks on here hold near and dear to their heart. They care about turnaround time, and file size. If you can't turn and burn in less than a week, you aren't going to get their business.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

If used correctly OpticFilm 120 Pro and SilverFast AI Studio is a fantastic combo.

Do you know if there are any good reviews of this scanner around? All I've seen are anecdotal reports, which seem mixed. I'm still scanning with the Coolscan 9000.

 

[fs999]

Do you know if there are any good reviews of this scanner around? All I've seen are anecdotal reports, which seem mixed. I'm still scanning with the Coolscan 9000.

I can only report my personal experience about OpticFilm 120 (not pro) I've bought 3 years ago, which I used with minor problems like pushing the carrier too far inside, Silverfast stopped responding during scanning (a few times) but all in all I had and still have superior results with this scanner.
So one advice is : NEVER PUSH THE CARRIER INSIDE or you will have to unplug and re plug the USB cable, start SilverFast and quit, to force the carrier come outside from the back.
And 2 years and one month after warranty (2 years here) the transformer burned the mainboard. I took contact with Plustek in Germany they ask 260 € to look at the scanner and they send it back two weeks later with a new mainboard and nothing more to pay !
As SiverFast AI Studio is delivered with the scanner you can simply auto calibrate it with the provided IT8 chart and also use the Job Manager which allows you to scan more than one shot, so you can prepare all the frames (directory, size, exposure, histogram, colours, iSRD, Multi-exposure, etc) and scan in one operation. At 2400 or 3200 dpi the scanner is really fast : 2-3 minutes for 3 frames. The Pro version should be even faster !

 

[fs999]

I have found some reviews :

ePhotoZine

FilmShootersCollective

ShutterBug

 

[Tom Kershaw]

At 2400 or 3200 dpi the scanner is really fast : 2-3 minutes for 3 frames. The Pro version should be even faster !

Is this 35mm or one of the medium format sizes?

 

[Kino]

The only concern with a consumer grade scanner is durability. If you are going to use these, establish a set number of units to have in your scanning area and buy multiple backup units. Embargo these backups until one breaks and keep them secret to avoid the inevitable pressure from impatient or procrastinating students who wait until the last second to do their entire semester's work in a single day.

I ran the Ohio State University Department of Photography and Cinema Film and Video Labs as the Equipment Manager back in the early 1990's for a brief period and can tell you that consumer grade equipment simply does not hold up to the torture of constant use.

Either invest in a high-end system (and guard it with your life) or invest heavily in redundant consumer systems for the inevitable breakdowns.